June 2025: National Oceans Month–Wonder: Sustaining What Sustains Us

Jun 5, 2025 | Announcements, Library

By Research Librarian Jessica Zaricki

National Oceans Month is a time to highlight the importance of the world’s oceans. In Portsmouth, our history is inextricably linked to the sea. Please join us in taking the opportunity to appreciate, study, and protect this invaluable natural resource that so deeply influences our community–past, present, and yet to come.

Members, find the listed titles on display in the Sawtelle Reading Room through the month of June.

Folklore and the Sea

FICTION

This collection of stories, songs, and legends was gathered over a period of 70 years and includes tales from Europe, North America, and the West Indies. Some accounts are true, others perhaps less so, but all are sure to delight and enchant the reader looking for a good sea tale.

Beck, Horace. Folklore and the Sea. GR910 .B37

Remarkably Bright Creatures: A Novel

FICTION

Named a Best Book of Summer, this novel explores the unlikely friendship between Tova, a widow working the nightshift at the Sowell Bay Aquarium, and Marcellus, a giant octopus living at the aquarium. Marcellus knows more than anyone suspects, and while he ordinarily would never help his human captors, he seeks to help Tova unlock the secrets surrounding the disappearance of her son 18 years before.

Van Pelt, Shelby. Remarkably Bright Creatures: A Novel. PS3622 .A58572 R46 2022

Black Cake: A Novel

FICTION

When matriarch Eleanor Bennett dies, she leaves her children an inheritance of Black Cake, a traditional Caribbean recipe, and a voice recording that details her hidden history. The sea plays a central role in this family saga about betrayals, secrets, and memory.

Wilkerson, Charmaine. Black Cake: A Novel. PS3623 .I5456 B58 2022

My Life With Sea Turtles: A Marine Biologist’s Quest to Protect One of the Most Ancient Animals on Earth

BIOGRAPHY

In this memoir, marine biologist Christine Figgener shares her work studying and protecting sea turtles. She describes her lifelong desire to study biology, her introduction to sea turtles in Costa Rica, and her struggles to be taken seriously in a male dominated field. Her story seeks to uncover the conservationist within us all.

Figgener, Christine. My Life With Sea Turtles: A Marine Biologist’s Quest to Protect One of the Most Ancient Animals on Earth. QH31 .F554 A3 20204

On a Farther Shore: The Life and Legacy of Rachel Carson

BIOGRAPHY

This biography of marine biologist and conservationist Rachel Carson explores Carson’s love for the natural world, her relationship with Dorothy Freeman, and her lasting influence as one of the 20th century’s most notable reformers.

Souder, William. On a Farther Shore: The Life and Legacy of Rachel Carson

Deep Water: The World In the Ocean

NON-FICTION

This blend of history, science, nature writing, and environmentalism explores humanity’s complex connection to the ocean. It speaks of the majesty of the sea and the important work of scientists and researchers attempting to unlock its secrets, as well as the detrimental impact of the human population on our oceans and how it may affect the future of the planet.

Bradley, James. Deep Water: The World In the Ocean. GC21 .B73 2024

The Edge of the Sea

NON-FICTION

This conclusion to Carson’s The Sea Trilogy focuses on sea life at the shore with particular focus given to the Atlantic coastline between Newfoundland and the Florida Keys. Though originally published in 1955, this classic introduction to marine biology will captivate and inform all of us with a love of tidepools and coastal ecology.

Carson, Rachel. The Edge of the Sea. QH91 .C3

The Ocean of Life: The Fate of Man and the Sea

NON-FICTION

This passionate and persuasive work explores the history of the relationship between man and the sea and gives particular focus to current threats to marine life. It explores the immense changes our oceans have undergone during the past 50 years and offers suggestions for their preservation.

Roberts, Callum. The Ocean of Life: The Fate of Man and the Sea. CB465 .R62 2012

Song for the Blue Ocean: Encounters Along the World’s Coasts and Beneath the Seas

NON-FICTION

This personal narrative from scientist and fishermen Carl Safina explores the world’s changing seas and those most affected by those changes. While some stories detail the negative effects of an unregulated global economy on the world’s oceans, others provide stories of hope concerning nature’s potential for revival and replenishment.

Safina, Carl. Song for the Blue Ocean: Encounters Along the World’s Coasts and Beneath the Seas. SH327.7 .S34 1998

Future Sea: How to Rescue and Protect the World’s Oceans

NON-FICTION

Ocean advocate and marine-policy researcher Deborah Rowan Wright presents a radical strategy of 100% ocean protection as an approach to managing the multiple environmental threats contributing to declining marine health. She argues that such a dramatic shift in current reasoning is necessary to confront the multiple threats to sea life including climate change, pollution, and overfishing and is necessary for the preservation of ocean life.

Wright, Deborah Rowan. Future Sea: How to Rescue and Protect the World’s Oceans. QH541.5 .S3 W75 2020

IMAGE: Hand-tinted bathing scene along Rye Beach, NH, circa 1920. Postcard by Frank Swallow of Exeter, NH. PC1343.